When NFC was first announced, the two big buzzwords associated with the technology were “spending” and “sharing.” Google has made it abundantly clear that they plan to use Google Wallet to handle the spending aspect of NFC. Google Wallet has been live for a short time now and has already been met with rave reviews. The sharing aspect of NFC hadn’t been detailed until tonight at Google’s live Ice Cream Sandwich event.

Available to any device with Near Field Communications running Ice Cream Sandwich (which will undoubtedly be just the Galaxy Nexus and S for quite some time), Beam is a built-in app for Android that allows two devices to share just about anything your phone can store by tapping two eligible devices together. Sharable data includes information from Android’s new People app, web links, map links, Android Market links, games, YouTube videos and other files.

Sharing through NFC is nothing new, but as Dieter Bohn of the Verge points out, on a major platform it is. With the way updates to hardware and software have worked in the past, by next summer everyone will be using Beam to share pictures, their favorite games and just about anything else you can imagine through the power of Android.

I just think its kind of awkward to put the phones together like that in order for the beam to work. Don’t see it being super successful unless they can implement some easy Bump-esque tapping. On another note, bye bye Bump and Read it later!

ags29

I can’t wait to see what cool tricks developers get to do with this and their apps.

http://None CaribGrackle

This feature really impressed me, I remember the old days of putting one phone next to the other in order to share files through infrared, slow as hell but useful. It then came Bluetooth and now we have NFC and Android Beam. Yes sir I’m a happy person right now, and is all thanks to Google and Android.

=..=

is it what nokia introduced when they launched nokia c7? nothing new..

Melissa

Very cool.

Mark

I don’t understand the constant frenzy behind NFC. It’s just a more advanced form of bluetooth. :/

frankwhite44

Just another reason why Android is better than the Fruit!

http://robvstate.com Rob

Will the Galaxy Nexus have Google Wallet on day 1? It wasn’t mentioned at all.